


Not Much Fun

by novadiablo



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Developing Relationship, M/M, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 09:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1220647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novadiablo/pseuds/novadiablo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Jim gets back from defeating Khan Bones has a few bones to pick with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Much Fun

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a few hours, may or may not continue it. I didn't even plan on putting it up. Whoops.

 

Bones hadn’t spoken to him in a week. His doctor had been rotated off when he was transferred to Starfleet Medical and Jim hadn’t seen him since. Had it only been a few days, Jim wouldn’t even by questioning it – from all reports Bones hadn’t slept until Jim had awoken – arisen from death, and what the hell, man?

A day or two to recover lost sleep wouldn’t be unexpected. Another one or two to acclimate to Earth again, maybe try to see Joanna, deal with the inevitable fallout of reviving the dead. He hadn’t been there when Jim had been discharged with an order to ‘take it easy, Kirk,’ from Christine Chapel, partnered with her interpretation of the McCoy glare. Jim had tried not to be too disappointed when the relieved faces of his first and comms officers had been there to greet him and his grumpy best friend’s was not. While his gloom may have gotten past Spock, Uhura’s sad smile told him it wasn’t unnoticed. Annoyingly, she refused to tell him where Bones was, though.

He’d been confined to the Captain’s quarters for another two days on Medical’s orders, basically having conversations with Admiralty over chat or filing reports. It was boring and intense and took a lot of concentration and he _really_ wanted to go for a run or breathe fresh Earth air or see Bones but none of those things happened. By the time it reached day six of the absent best friend, Jim was insulted and a little pissed off – even Bones couldn’t revive someone from the dead and then ignore them for days on end. Eventually he brought the topic up with Spock, who had been at his quarters for hours at a time helping him trawl through paperwork. There was going to be so much backlash on this mission it wasn’t even funny.

“So has Bones finished all of his reports and stuff?” He asked halfway through reading a medical report penned by Chapel.

“Nyota has insisted, for reasons I do not comprehend, that I give you no information on the actions or whereabouts of Doctor McCoy,” Spock replied, not looking up from his work. Jim let out a grunt of irritation.

“However,” Spock continued, “if my captain were to order me to answer his question I would have no choice but to tell him that the doctor is to return from visiting his daughter in Georgia in two days and that the captain should be cautious in approaching the doctor as the doctor is not in the slightest pleased with the captain.”

There was a silence between them.

“If the captain were to order me.” Spock finished. The sat in silence until Uhura came to collect Spock. As they were leaving Jim grabbed Uhura’s arm.

“Why is Bones more pissed at me than usual? Is it because I actually died?”

Uhura looked at him, her face an unappealing mix of anger and pity. “Oh Jim, it’s so much more than that I don’t even know where to start.”

_

The week after was inherently frustrating. Jim was in that uncomfortable position of being well enough for meetings with admiralty but not well enough to be at the top of his game, meaning they felt more like interrogations than discussions of the decisions made on the mission. Jim was aware that Bones was being absolutely grilled alive for every detail about Khan’s blood, but he’d only seen him once from a distance and the man was unshaven and pissed off and looked exactly like he did when Jim first met him, only older.

Jim didn’t know a lot, he’d come to realise, but he did know that now was not the time to question Bones on why he wasn’t talking to him. Jim was exhausted enough himself that he had taken to falling into bed as soon as the meetings were over and not waking up until his chronometer beeped like a demon from hell. He hoped it wasn’t a side effect, but for now he couldn’t tell whether his lethargy was from honest exhaustion or something more sinister. It’s not like he had Bones to ask, either.

He was in new territory with this whole absent-best-friend thing. While he and Spock debriefed after each session, there was something fundamentally missing. Namely someone who was sick of and pissed off at the entirely of Starfleet itself, a.k.a Bones. Jim could rant and rave all he wanted and he’d get nothing but Spock’s passive face, a look that just screamed ‘illogal’.

It didn’t help that the last look Uhura had given him seemed to have stuck and she was constantly simultaneously pissed and upset about the whole situation. She’d been feeding him limited information about McCoy, but nothing substantial enough for Jim to figure out what was wrong and why he was being avoided.

So Jim plodded on. There was an ending to this monotony in sight – according the Medical he was definitely improving and he had a little more energy and there were rumoured to only be a few days left of debriefings before they were going to be starting on preparations for the continuation of their mission. The biggest issue Jim’s suitability as captain after a death experience, but little birdies told him that there was very little resistance on that front during the past few days.

For some reason, Bones was still going to meetings – even Spock didn’t know why. It wasn’t being openly discussed like Jim’s meetings were. Most Captain debriefings were forced to be public record unless they involved a court trial, and seeing as Khan was already back in suspended animation that wasn’t going to be relevant.

The last day of the meetings had gone more smoothly than the rest until Jim had stepped out of the door to find Uhura standing there to meet him. As he went to greet her she stopped him, concern clear in her features.

“Captain. Jim.” she said, and it didn’t take a communications officer to hear the waver in her voice. “Leonard’s going to be grounded.”

_

 

Jim found himself belting on the door of Admiral Archer’s office in just a few minutes, out of breath from running. The door opened manually, Archer peering out in annoyance.

“Kirk, is there something you needed to add? We only just –“

“May I come in, sir?” Jim said, out of breathe but with enough force that the man just sighed and stepped aside.

Archer sat down behind his desk but Jim remained standing.

“I was just wondering the reason my Chief Medical Officer has been grounded. Sir.” Jim said all in a rush.

“Captain Kirk, those details are still being discussed –“

“I mean if it’s because of the Khan blood thing that’s just ridiculous, McCoy has already said he’ll destroy it if he’s ask—“

“Captain Kirk, this is under Doctor Boyce’s jurisdiction –“

“I don’t think he should be punished for using what tools he had available, he obviously though reviving me was the only—“

“Kirk! He chose to be bloody grounded!”

Jim stopped short.

“What?”

“He requested to be grounded at the beginning of the proceedings, Kirk. More than that, I cannot tell you. Perhaps you should talk to the man yourself.”

Jim stood in stunned silence for a moment before nodding absently and letting himself out. Uhura was waiting for him impatiently.

“Captain?” She asked as he strode past her and she jogged to keep up. “Captain, where are you going?”

Jim swung around to look at her.

“Where is Doctor McCoy staying?” He asked, accidentally showering her in spit.

“Jim, I—“

“DO NOT play with me Lieutenant, where is he?”

“Uh, level 2 of the medical officers’ quarters, but Jim!” she called after him as he strode off. She followed him at a jog until they reached the medical officers’ quarters and then joined him in the elevator. Jim was basically buzzing with anger and Uhura smartly kept her gaze averted and her mouth shut.

When they reached floor two, she lowly told Jim that McCoy was in ‘number five’ and then followed at a distance behind him. Jim pressed the buzzer into Bones’ room and patiently waited for the door to open. He pressed it again and again before the door finally slid open and revealed Bones, clad in Starfleet track pants, a t-shirt and a week’s worth of stubble.

“What the _fuck_ , Bones.”

The door slid shut. Jim let out a frustrated groan and started punching in Bones’ unchanging door code in the keypad. ACCESS DENIED blinked the pad in blue. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. Frustrated, Jim punched it in again. ACCESS DENIED. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

Jim stared blankly at the keypad. Bones had changed his door code? But it had always been his father’s birthdate. Why would he change it? What the hell had happened to make Bones that desperate to keep Jim away?

Behind him Uhura sighed and pushed him away. She then turned to the keypad and confidently keyed in a code – 412233. She stepped away, pushing him towards the opening door. “Don’t fuck it up,” she said in an undertone and strides away.

_

 

Jim stepped into the low lit room, eyes trained on the back facing him.

“Dammit, Nyota,” Bones said as the door slid shut. He turned around to face Jim and they were both silent for a moment. “Can I help you Captain?”

“Don’t you ‘Captain’ me,” Jim snapped. “Care to explain why you’ve asked to be grounded, _Doctor_?”

“I have my reasons,” Bones said, picking up the Padd he’d been reading and putting it in the top drawers of his bedside table.

“Oh? And what are they, McCoy?” Bones sighed, sitting down on his bed and scrubbing at his face.

“Jim, can we not do this now? I just finished a whole day of debriefings and –“ Bones really did look exhausted and sad, but Jim wasn’t having it.

“Oh? So when are we going to do this then? When I’m halfway to the neutral zone? What are you even going to do here?”

“They have a lot of research and teaching position available since the London sector was destroyed and I’ll be seeing Joanna more than once every few years. It’ll be good, Jim,” Bones explained like he was trying to convince himself.

“So you expect me to just leave my CMO, my _best friend_ here? You’re lying.”

“ _This isn’t the academy any more, Jim_!” Bones hissed. “We’re not BFFs going to explore the universe! Everyone in the goddamn universe knows I’m only on that ship because of you and it’s not enough anymore. You have a whole crew, and you have Spock, and I have other things to do.”

“So what, you’re going to just quit?”

“As opposed to what? Stay on the ship until you get yourself so far dead that I can’t help you and then come back to a world of pitying glances – ‘oh look there’s our hero Jim Kirk’s CMO, poor thing wasn’t even there when the guy died, no wonder he’s so grumpy all the time,--“

“ _That’s_ your problem? That I called for Spock instead of you?” Jim said incredulously.

Bones looked up from his hands. “Yes Jim, that, amongst, many, many other things, not least which the fact that you _actually died_ , is my ‘problem’.”

Jim sat down on Bones’ desk chair.

“But you know why I did that, right?”

Breathing deeply, Bones looked to the sky and answered. “No, Jim. I do not know why you wanted to spend your last moments with your first officer than your supposed best friend.”

“Oh my god, Bones, you’re jealous!”

If looks could kill, Jim would be dead three times over just from the one glower he received, so he swivelled around to look Bones square in the eye.

“Look, Bones, I knew if I called for you, you’d try and do something and either die with me, which, no, I won’t be responsible for that, or you’d feel guilty forever that you couldn’t and that’s also a thing I really don’t want. Spock, well, he’s too logical for either of those things.”

Bones was quiet for a second.

“In case you didn’t notice, Jim, I actually did do something about it,” he said, not visually smirking but with a tone of amusement in his voice.

“Yeah,” Jim said after a second. “I never did thank you for that.”

“Hah. No,” Bones said, probably remembering Jim’s sincere thank you to Spock from the biobed.

“Thankyou.”

“You’re welcome Jim.”

“And you shouldn’t be jealous.”

“I’m not jealous!” Bones outraged.

“Spock may be brilliant and maybe in some other universe we’re best friends or family or lovers or whatever, but he’ll never be you.”

Bones snorted. “Jesus Jim, why don’t you just confess your love for me while you’re at it?”

“Okay,” Jim shrugged, “I love you.”

Bones looked up, half a smile on his face. “I know, kid.”

“Please don’t stay,” Jim said, not begging, but not quite asking either.

“We’ll see, Jim. Now get, I have shit to do and you’re still recovering.”

_

 

“Hey kids,” Bones said a few days later, sitting down in the officers’ mess next to Jim and opposite Sulu and Chekov. Sulu and Chekov both waved and Jim nodded to him through the noodles in his mouth.

“I hear the admiralty got off your back and retracted the grounding,” Sulu said. “Thank god, we can’t handle Jim here on our own.”

Bones turned, raising his eyebrows at Jim. Jim’s innocent face said it all.

“Yeah,” Bones said, going along with the partial lie. “It seemed pretty up in the air but I don’t think they were actually going to ground me. They just wanted to see me squirm.”

Sulu and Chekov laughed but Jim’s hand tightened around his thigh for a second before going back to his own. Bones just smirked at the two boys and stole one of Jim’s baked potatoes.

They chatted a bit longer before the two others left, leaving the officer’s mess empty but for Jim and Bones.

“We set off in a week,” Jim said, breaking the silence.

“I heard. Milk run. Should be good for the crew, something to ease them back in,” Bones said, eating Jim’s abandoned food.

“Not much fun, though,” Jim said petulantly.

“Nothing much is fun right now, kiddo. Starfleet’s hard work, but you know that.”

Jim nodded and they lapsed into a silence again, before Bones’ communicator went off, indicating a shift at Medical. Instead of saying goodbye, as he usually would, he grabbed Jim’s chin with two fingers and pressed his lips to Jim’s cheek, leaving in silence. In the glass door he could see Jim watching him go with a smile on his face.


End file.
